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John Locatelli walks past one of the gated areas where he kept sheep at his ranch in Scotts Valley Friday. Locatelli stop raising sheep after various mountain lion attacks over the past two years. (Kevin Johnson -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

John Locatelli steps out of one of his chicken coops at his ranch in Scotts Valley Friday. Locatelli is careful to take extra measures to protect his livestock from wildlife. (Kevin Johnson -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

John Locatelli walks past one of the gated areas where he kept sheep at his ranch in Scotts Valley Friday. Locatelli stop raising sheep after various mountain lion attacks over the past two years. (Kevin Johnson -- Santa Cruz Sentinel)

Fitted with a tracking collar and ear tag, the lion is readied to be transported to a release location in the wild. (Dan Coyro -- Santa Cruz Sentinel file)

An adult male mountain lion, who wandered into the city of Santa Cruz looks out from behind a covering of brush along the Branciforte Creek Aqueduct in May 2013 after wandering through a number of streets and backyards. (Shmuel Thaler -- Santa Cruz Sentinel file)

SCOTTS VALLEY >> After 30 years of owning sheep in the Santa Cruz Mountains, John Locatelli gave up the lifestyle last year, after his herd was wiped out by a puma.

In two days in 2013, a mountain lion killed all nine of his sheep, said Locatelli, who then obtained a Department of Fish and Wildlife hunting permit but was not able to find the cat.

Locatelli tried again, buying more sheep and enclosing them at night with a sheepdog to guard them.

But Locatelli said he didn’t like keeping his sheep indoors for 12 hours each night. He’s raised sheep outdoors for decades and never had issues, he said. Herding them at dawn and dusk became a chore, especially after hearing of puma sightings at Aptos’s Seascape Golf Club.

“It’s a matter of time,” he said. “They’re going to nail them in the daytime when they’re out in the pasture.”

Soon after, a puma killed three of his five sheep, and Locatelli decided he was done, selling his remaining two and his dog.

Making his 4-foot fence taller was not an option, since he has four pastures totaling 15 acres, he said. He also tried setting baited traps, but he’s never even seen a puma, let alone caught one, he said.

“Forget the small farmer, its over with,” Locatelli said.

License to kill

Although hunting pumas is illegal in California due to their specially protected status, the law allows them to be killed by special permit, when they pose a threat to livestock. Since 2000, 22 permits have been issued in the county, resulting in 13 kills. Since 2010, two residents applied for multiple permits, resulting in two kills each.

When owners lose an animal to a puma, Fish and Wildlife staff must first survey the site to ensure a puma was present. Then owners are given 10 days to kill the cat, within a 10-mile radius from where the damage occurred.

No one can be sure that owners are killing the right cat, but pumas typically stay within the area after a kill, hiding the carcass and returning to it several times to feed, said Marc Kenyon, senior environmental scientist for the Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Although the department says the goal of the permit program is to protect owner’s property, not trophy hunting, photos were emailed to the Sentinel in November of a permit holder smiling, holding a dead collared puma under the shoulders. A second photo shows the same puma, lying in a pool of blood with a dollar bill on its stomach, next to a hunting rifle.

Worsening problem

Davenport resident Susan McCrary-Huff killed a permitted puma in 2012, after one scaled her 10-foot fence and killed six goats. She’s raised goats in Davenport her whole life and never had an issue with pumas until the past five years, she said. She’s lost around 10 goats to pumas since, and said her neighbors also have noticed an uptick.

“Anything that’s not locked down for the night is fair game basically,” McCrary-Huff said.

What farmers may not know is that hunting pumas results in more livestock losses, said Veronica Yovovich, a graduate student in UC Santa Cruz’s puma research lab.

Of the 13 permitted kills in the county since 2000, all but one were male cats, according to the department.

Male pumas will defend their territory from other males to the death. When a strong male dies, younger, less savvy males enter — cats who don’t know where deer frequent and are more likely to stumble upon human areas, Yovovich said, a finding supported by a 2013 Washington State University study.

“What you want is one territorial male that protects your land from intruder males,” she said. “You’re more likely to have problems when you have a flow of young males who don’t know the rules.”

The best line of defense against mountain lions is locking animals inside at night, Yovovich said.

“That can virtually eliminate any problem you have with carnivores,” she said.